The God-Filled Life of Love – George’s Weekly Message September 23, 2018
Dear Beloved Friends,
This Sunday is the fall Kick-off to our 2018-2019 Program Year!
This Sunday, our worship will include full service music, including sung Holy Eucharist. We will kick-off a new Godly Play Sunday School Year with Ms. Patty Buffaloe. There will be something for everybody this Sunday!
Every Jot and Tittle.
We will also begin our year-long exploration of the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians. We will study the first century letter to the neophyte church in Corinth by the practice of lectio sequential, the practice of reading Holy Scripture in its entirety, one verse, one paragraph at a time in sequence. As opposed to the Revised Common Lectionary, which only includes certain key verses and scriptures, for our New Testament Epistle (or Letter) reading, we will not avoid or edit, but study the entire letter, every jot and tittle, week-in and week-out until it is complete. It is my hope and prayer that this method of study and discussion will reveal more of the meat of the letter, and allow us to delve deeply into the lessons it teaches to its near-east audience in the first century, and connect it to lessons which are relevant for us in twenty-first century America.
Going Deeper.
This Sunday also begins our first Sunday morning Adult Christian Formation offering with a thirty-minute discussion session on the 1 Corinthians passage which will be the topic of my homily that morning. Our time together will give us the opportunity to go deeper, to ask tougher questions of the text and of ourselves. I have experienced this style of free discussion of the text before and I have found that often times folks will discover something more meaningful and will ‘go deeper’ when it comes out of the mouths of their fellow brothers and sisters as we all wrestle honestly with what the text is saying to us in our context today. We have deep wisdom from our experiences of both victory and failure, and hard-won lessons to share with one another.
This Sunday begins our official third year together, you and I, and my heart is beating fast and hard with excitement and anticipation at what I pray will be a year of going deeper in our loving action, our love-spreading difference making and in our loving care for one another. What an adventure!
See you Sunday.
George+